


Sunlight Through The Ashes

by 4sunlight_throughtheashes4



Series: Moon Embracing The Sun [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Coming of Age, Depression, Eventual Romance, F/M, Heavy Angst, High Fantasy, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythology References, Revenge, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, court intrigue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-18 13:16:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 12,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21711370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4sunlight_throughtheashes4/pseuds/4sunlight_throughtheashes4
Summary: *sequel to You Be The Anchor*Reeling from the loss of Steve, Cerise is thrust into the realm of Nynvere--a primal, pantheistic dimension with no law and no liberty except that won by blood.Caught between a suffering populace and a sadistic court, Cerise must sanctify the land in order to save it--and herself.And she must do it as Queen.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Moon Embracing The Sun [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555798
Comments: 33
Kudos: 21





	1. Nowhere Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!  
> I've got this out earlier than when I said I would, because I really can't stay away from this story. It makes me hurt. :(
> 
> So, a couple of things: 
> 
> 1) As I mentioned before, this series is about to undergo a fundamental shift. It's going to be much darker in tone and content--and it kinda has to be, for obvious reasons. So, to that end:  
> TRIGGER WARNINGS-- Unhealthy coping mechanisms, extreme grief, depression, panic attacks, graphic violence, torture, blood, explicit sexual content. 
> 
> 2) Because I know I left you guys on a particularly nasty cliffhanger, here are two little tidbits:
> 
> i-- This is pretty much ranging into fantasy now, and in the realms of myth and magic--which I am SUPER excited about because I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE mythology and what it reveals about the nature of man--I consider myself a bit of a modern-day myth critic (please someone know what that actually means *prays*)-- which means there are going to be heavy references to and from ancient myth, and not just the standard Greco-Roman stuff, I also mean Egyptian, Celtic, Norse--and the Oriental ones as well. May even use Indian, given that I am one and all xD
> 
> ii- A lot of you, through the course of You Be The Anchor, have asked me whether Cerise is going to ever have a best friend--not a father figure like Tony, or a reluctant mentor like Natasha or even comic relief as Thor--but a real best friend. I was never able to answer, because I already had this plot in mind--but through the path of Sunlight, you WILL see Cerise get her very own best friend, and they're going to be fiercely loyal to each other, you can bet on that!  
> WOOT WOOT! 
> 
> Quote at the start of this chapter is from my favorite spoken word poet Phil Kaye's book 'Date & Time.'

I know the nights  
we shatter hourglasses to fall asleep  
The afternoons we take photographs  
of our own shadows just to prove that we left a mark

I stay awake reminding myself of the wetness of my own lips  
Remembering that I am a leaf off of the tree  
of my parents' first kiss  
and if I hold my shrubs to the sky  
I can still see their veins there. 

#  Nowhere Woman 

Cerise was only conscious of one thing as she walked over the ramshackle cobblestones: that her identity was eroding itself from the inside out--as if all that she was and all that she had been was escaping her--settling above her head like the aspirations of some diaphanous cloud.  
Nothing made sense to her anymore--not the yellow-robed sage behind her or the gray-armored soldier flanking her--Luffy was her only point of reason, shadowing her steps with each sinuous ripple of her gargantuan frame--at her side as she had always been.  
The warm fur against her ankles helped secure Cerise--  
She finally began to notice her surroundings--the rust-red dunes rolling in the distance, angry and acrid in their crimson cast--the graphite-streaked glacial marble of the castle spires splintering above her, somehow conveying a sense of cold despite the sweltering heat around them. 

There was a wasted sense of grandeur to the place--a sharp, stabbing beauty, despite the suffering seeping from the streets under Cerise's feet.  
Something like the surviving synergy of motion in a tapestry amidst of its own tatters.  
It still didn't register to Cerise--where she was, what she was doing--none of it.  
To her, it felt like the building blocks of her life were falling like dominoes around her feet, one after the other--first it had been Steve, with that terrible, final farewell--and then it had been her dignity, ebbing out of her like the outgoing tide of her blood--and now, now it was her reality, all she had known, evaporating away to nothingness like the moisture in her throat.  
The slap of her feet against the burning stone beneath her was ringing in Cerise's ears--the definitive slam of her dominoes buckling under once and for all.  
Luffy growled, causing Cerise's companions to freeze.  
_The ground is burning her feet,_ the panther projected forward--and Cerise somehow knew all three of them had heard. _You must give her something to protect them. She is not used to this terrain._  
Cerise blinked, numbly raising the soles of her feet to reveal the welters across her skin.  
"Why did you not say anything?" The gold-eyed man demanded, lifting her over the white-cracked steps and through the doorway of the gray-streaked castle.  
"I--" Cerise stuttered, dazed--the instant drop in temperature dizzying her intensely. "I don't think I--I noticed."  
They stared at her for a long, long moment--  
And then the crone spoke.  
"Little lady," she said, but there was no condescension to her tone, just a careful tact. "We have much to explain to you."  
"If you would," said the sage, gesturing down the arched hallway. "We must--"  
The words seemed to float just above Cerise's ears--they didn't go in.  
They couldn't go in--because now it was finally sinking in.

"I need to go back," Cerise jerked to a stop, limbs wooden and unresponsive. "I need to--they--Tony--"  
"Tony," her voice broke around his name--at the thought of him--taciturn, abrasive Tony, who had grudgingly given her his trust and his affection--  
But he had given it.  
And she--  
She had left.  
She had left _him_.  
"Please," Cerise met the man's gaze first. It was strange--there was no softness to his features--only stiff reserve--but it was his eyes she turned to, not the woman's. "However you got me here, you have to send me back--there are people that I--that are--I--"  
"There is no going back," the man answered flatly, tone even and unidentifiable. "This is not Earth, Corisande--this is Nynvere--once ruled by the gods and now ruled by their races. There are no planes or cars here to return you--there are only the remnants of magic left from Quotho's pillaging--and we used the last of it on rescuing you through the portal. In healing you."  
Cerise's eyes were stinging in a way that had nothing to do with the heat.  
"But--"  
_Child,_ Luffy brushed her snout against Cerise's cheek. _There is nothing they can do. You cannot return._  
"But he's waiting for me," Cerise whispered, throat burning as she imagined the lonely curve of Tony's back, bent over his lab table. "He'll keep waiting for me. He'll think that I--that I abandoned him."  
The crone turned her tolerant, silver-coin gaze onto her.  
"Corisande--"  
"That is _not_ my name," Cerise forced through gritted teeth, the first flares of anger surfacing under her skin.  
"It is the name your parents gave you," the woman replied, unruffled. "And so it is yours as it has always been."  
Cerise froze.  
"My--my parents?" She repeated, the words hanging like leaden chains off the prison of her lips. "You know my parents?"  
"Knew," said the woman quietly. "I taught your mother all she ever knew about magic."  
"I--" Cerise leaned against the stalwart, steadfast frame of Luffy's body--anchoring herself with the weight of her muscles locking against her. "Will you--"  
"Will you tell me about them?" She finished, so unsure in that moment--so very, very vulnerable.  
"I can do better than tell you," the saffron-clad woman walked to Cerise with a rapidity belying her frail body. "I can show you."  
She pressed her pointer finger to Cerise's forehead--  
And Cerise's vision went white.

~~~

_If it was a dream, it was nothing like any Cerise had ever experienced before--the vividness of her surroundings so sharp, they seemed to be almost in technicolor.  
The marketplace was bustling, the scent of scarlet spice so strong it stung Cerise's nose--the tang in the air so thick she could almost taste it.  
And then there was her--  
The woman with the nut-brown skin and hair like gleaming cornsilk--the red of her gown so stark it seemed like she moved amidst plumes of flame.  
And her eyes--  
They were Cerise's eyes, bright green and warm, copied perfectly onto the willowy woman's face.  
But that wasn't true, was it?  
It was Cerise who had inherited those eyes--the self-same arch of those hands--the slightly in-turned ankles.  
If someone had asked her whether her mother was beautiful, Cerise wouldn't have known the answer--it didn't seem to matter anyway, not when her face was so vibrant it seemed painted with Rembrandt gold--the sway of her body so alive she seemed to dance with every step.  
It seemed someone else had noticed too--  
A man, ivory-skinned, curlicues of smoked-ink hair falling over his forehead in ringlets.  
He was watching the woman out of two-toned gray eyes--one the color of morning frost, and the other freshly-polished pewter--his clothes were nondescript, he was hardly tall--but there was a quiet strength in the twist of his sharp-hewn lips--an infinite patience in the steady pace of his feet.  
It wasn't exactly Cerise's mother that the man was looking at, however--it was the diamond-edged purse at her side, embossed and glittering like fish-scales in the afternoon sun.  
He was light as gossamer on his feet, melting into the crowd, circling in around Cerise's mother--though she didn't seem to notice, the flash of her teeth as bright as her jewelry in the dappled light of the courtyard.  
The man was a shadow's pace behind her now--reaching with rough-gloved hands for the purse.  
Cerise tried to call out to her mother--but she had no voice and no movement--as insubstantial as a wraith in the clamor of the courtyard.  
The man's fingers closed around the purse--  
And a dagger closed around his neck.  
"Stealing from the Queen, are we?" The woman asked, smile as savage as the blood of her dress. "That's going to cost you.” _

…

_Cerise now found herself on polished crystal floor, wrought silver twining over the heads of slender dancers wending their way across the room.  
She spotted her mother at once—no less riveting in a dress of opalescent moonshine, lips like sugared roses.  
And the man was right next to her, alabaster skin stark against the dark velvet of his clothes.  
“Gordayna,” said he, voice cool and winter-soft. “When you said it was going to cost me, I didn’t think it meant being your personal escort to every frivolous event you attend.”  
“Should have thought of that before attempting to rob me, Tristan,” Gordayna smirked, drawing him down under the flickering firelight.  
He seemed to sober as they danced, a reflective gleam in his grey eyes as she turned into the curve of his arms.  
“I don’t say it often enough,” Tristan murmured quietly as they moved. “But I should. Thank you—for giving me a chance.”  
Cerise felt her throat tighten as she stared at his face—at the reverence in his gaze—the rapture.  
She knew that look—had it not been directed at her, once?  
Only those eyes had been blue…  
She knew the answering curve of Gordayna’s mouth as well—had her own not softened that way too, smiled with that sweet, suffering delight?  
Cerise turned away as their lips met in the midst of the minstrel’s singing. _

…

_The room was bare and barren, slick-heavy with heat. Tristan knelt across the sheet-tossed bed, face pinched with exhaustion—but his eyes were shining with that tender, lingering lovelight Cerise had seen, and felt, so many many times before…  
Gordayna smiled at him, wan-white and waxy with perspiration—still candle-bright with incandescent joy because of what she held in her hands: a small, swaddled, squalling bundle—  
Cerise.  
“She has your eyes,” Tristan whispered in awed disbelief. “She’s—she’s beautiful.”  
“Of course she is,” Gordayna said fiercely. “And she’s going to grow up to be just like her father.”  
Tristan laughed in wearied relief.  
“So a thief, then?” He said amusedly, pressing his forehead to Gordayna’s.  
“As if,” Gordayna snorted, trailing her free hand across Tristan’s face. “The only thing she’ll be stealing is someone’s heart some day.”  
“I should hope so,” Tristan said softly, cradling Cerise in his hands with a gentleness that made her ache with unfulfilled longing. “I would wish with all my heart for her to find a love like ours.”  
Cerise was choking on her sobs—they wouldn’t wrench themselves out of her—wouldn’t let her say what she wanted to.  
“I did, Dad,” she wanted to scream, to sink into those arms holding her so steadfast and secure. “I found it and I lost it—and there’s no one I can go to anymore.”  
“Not even you.” _

…

_Cerise felt her heart shatter all over again—perforate the raw flesh of her lungs as the vision changed—as the room swam red in front of her eyes, so virulently vermilion it looked as if a child had spread crimson paint all around.  
Tristan lay disfigured and dying at her feet—hand stretched out towards Gordayna, all the shine shorn from her hair—steeped as it was in in the dark tar of blood.  
And in her feebly twitching hands, she clutched a small, torn baby blanket… _

~~~

Cerise found herself shaking on the cold stone floor, the stagnant air sharp against the burn in her eyes.  
She stared up at the impassive face of the sage.  
“So now you know,” said the old woman. “Gordayna used the last breaths of her magic to send you to Earth. To save you from the brothers.”  
Cerise felt as insubstantial as a moth-wing held to the light.  
“All my life I thought I was abandoned,” she murmured, voice cracked and sore. “I thought—I thought alone was all I knew, but—“  
“You were never alone,” the sage answered softly. “You were loved, and you were lost.”  
“But you were never forgotten.”  
“We never stopped looking for you,” confirmed the armored man, averting his eyes as Cerise’s throat convulsed. “Not once.”  
She bent her head down, barely able to stifle her sobs.  
The man gazed at her in disapproval.  
“You are too free with your tears,” he admonished, though the hand he used to tug her up was careful—almost considerate. “Your sorrow belongs to you, and you alone.”  
“Kieran, this is not the time,” sighed the sage.  
Cerise blinked at the unfamiliar name.  
“Ah,” the crone nodded to herself. “You still do not know who _we_ are.”  
“I am Olwen of the Sibylline Sect,” she said, rising to her full height. “Last of the Soothsayers.”  
“Kieran,” the man repeated curtly, giving her a short, crisp bow. “Lord of the Lír.”  
Luffy studied the bleached-bone white of Cerise’s face, and bracketed her with her body.  
_I think this is enough for today,_ she pronounced with finality. _Let the child rest._  
“As you wish, Great Guardian,” Olwen dipped her head in acquiescence.  
“Corisande,” she turned to Cerise. “Are there any requirements you would ask for in your lodging?”  
“What?” Cerise squeezed her eyes dry, confused. “No—there’s—no. Anything is fine.”  
“You are a queen in making,” Kieran’s jaw tightened. “Anything should not be fine.”  
_I don’t feel like a queen,_ Cerise wanted to say. _I barely even feel like myself._

~~~

Cerise walked dazedly after Kieran—barely noticing the chambers she’d been given, or his departure.  
Luffy padded next to her, curling against the braided mat on the floor.  
Cerise turned in a circle, but nothing of the area registered—until she caught a flash of blue.  
It was a dreamcatcher, hanging over the low-slung bed, its feathers a warm, vibrant lapis lazuli.  
Cerise’s knees buckled so fast, she hit the floor before she knew she was falling. 

“He’s really gone.” Cerise blindly reached for Luffy, sickened by the last, great loss of Steve. “I’m never—I’m never going to see him again. It’s—it’s over, isn’t it, Luff? For g-good?”  
The panther said nothing, wrapping a tail around Cerise’s shuddering frame instead. 

Cerise could sense the drops of liquid descending down her face—but what was their value, when no one was there to wipe them away anymore?  
When _Steve_ wasn’t there to wipe them away anymore.  
They felt like flecks of mud coating her face—something dirty, something unworthy of notice—something to be rubbed away like it never existed.  
Like she never existed.


	2. Iztiraar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well...  
> Don't hate him too much please...
> 
> The chapter name, 'Iztiraar'--is an Urdu word (Urdu is one of the oldest languages of India, dating back to the 12th century--it was heavily influenced by Persian and Arabic, and together with Hindi [another major Indian language] is known as 'Hindustani'. It's heavily used in Pakistan as well, I think.  
> "Iztiraar" means a restless helplessness in the wake of love's all-encompassing influence. 
> 
> Quote at the start of the chapter from the lovely Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights.' :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again!  
> Slowly being consumed by anxiety because these finals are destroying me...
> 
> So how about I destroy you instead. :)))

'The entire world is a collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her.' 

#  Iztiraar 

Steve didn't know what it was to be still anymore.  
The ache was ever-present: gnawing at his ankles as if were a piranha swirling around the suffering that lay at his feet.  
And so the agony led him to the wee hours of that morning, as it had led him to every morning before it--racing through the deserted streets as fast as his feet could carry him.  
But they couldn't carry him past the hurt. 

Steve could have dodged all he liked--the desperate longing still dogged his heels.  
It lived in his lungs just as much as the air did--whipped through him knife-quick and brutal as he kept running--  
But his pain kept pace with him anyway. 

It put no strain on his body, the serum had taken care of that--but his heart was howling--feeble and exhausted as only a wounded animal could be. 

She was still the red string running through everything--the only lens through which Steve had been able to see beauty--been able to believe in it.  
The whole world stood tilted to her axis--transfigured in relation to her--melded together so seamlessly that Steve could no longer tell where Cerise ended and the world began.  
But she _had_ ended.  
And everything Steve saw now was a retributive whip against the lacerated flesh of his heart--against what it had done.  
He'd left her, he knew--but she had never really left _him_ \--she was still there, existing in the splintered flashes of Steve's surroundings that couldn't escape his notice.  
She was everywhere and nowhere all at once--there in the dew-speckled grass passing by him like the dancing green light of her eyes--in the trees fanning away behind Steve akin to the slender cypress of her body--in the plum-hued sunrise like the phantom press of her lips against his own--  
But she would never be in his arms again--he would never be between the close and burning borders of her--never sense the strength of her sillage. 

It ended where it always did--the futility of Steve's forward motion lurching him to a stop in front of the mural.  
It was always in front of the mural.  
Steve didn't know why it appealed to him--the paint was thin and faded, the only things visible the Stygian iron of the woman's hair and the sideways slope of her face--the rest had succumbed to time.  
But it didn't matter to Steve--didn't matter that it was old or damaged--  
Not when he could fill in the cracks of the woman's face--fill it with the life-giving lines of Cerise's smile--  
Feel, for one fleeting, eternal second--that she was truly there with him. 

"You know," came an amused voice behind him. "For somebody supposedly on the run, you sure don't make much effort to hide yourself."  
He turned around numbly, only to see coffee-brown skin and a sardonic gaze.  
"I don't know what you mean," Steve replied flatly, drawing the hood of his sweatshirt more securely around his head.  
"Right," the man scoffed. "Your face is everywhere on the news these days. They say you've gone missing."  
"I am missing," Steve agreed tonelessly.  
_She is missing from me._  
"And yet you run the same path every day, and land up right in front of that," the man pointed to the mural. "Not very smart if you don't want to get noticed, is it?"  
Steve barely heard him--it was difficult for anything to break through the fog in his brain.  
"What does it matter to you?" He finally said with some effort.  
"It doesn't," shrugged the other man easily. "Was just curious what the great Captain America was doing in these parts. I'm not gonna rat out a fellow member of the force anyway."  
Steve blinked.  
"You--"  
"Yup," the man confirmed without waiting for him to finish. "Sam Wilson of the 58th Unit, Pararescue. Nice to meet you, Captain."  
Steve silently shook his hand--despite his lackadaisical tone, there was a quiet integrity in Sam's eyes--a sobriety to his stance.  
It reassured Steve somehow.  
"So why do you come here everyday?" Sam asked, and when Steve didn't answer, prompted him anyway. "That painting look like someone you know?"  
_Like someone I gave up,_ Steve thought as he turned his eyes back to the mural-- but he couldn't find the voice to say it. _Like someone who would have given me the world if I asked._  
_And instead I took it away._

~~~

Cerise leaned over the terrace--and over the land that lay before her, the sepia sands seeming to stretch into some never-ending distance.  
There was a ruinous beauty to it that called to Cerise: like the ravaged visage of an Aphrodite old and forgotten--but still alive.  
Cerise closed her eyes against the faint tannish glow of the sun, the low rumble of Luffy's breathing behind her her only comfort.  
Time seemed to spin over itself in the darkness--  
She flicked open her eyes--and blinked.  
A small bird hopped before her, bright and beady-eyed.  
It seemed disoriented somehow--off-kilter against the dull ochre daubed over its surroundings.  
Hesitantly, Cerise extended her arm--and the bottle-blue bird sidled onto her hand, twittering quietly.  
A faint smile tugged the corners of Cerise's lips upwards.  
"Are you lost too, little one?" She asked softly, humming the snatches of a far-away song--so removed from this realm that she'd been thrown into--so alien to the land she stood upon. "At least you can fly away."  
There was a beat of silence--and then the bird took wing as the door yawned ajar.  
"Lady Corisande," said Kieran in greeting, though the glittering gold-coin of his eyes suggested that he had been watching her for some time already. "Olwen bids you to her side."  
Cerise stared at him.  
"It's barely morning," she replied, nonplussed.  
Kieran raised an eyebrow.  
"The sun has risen, has it not?" He responded, as if that explained everything, and without waiting for her answer, strode away from the balcony, beckoning for Cerise to follow.

She trailed after him, legs weightless, stuttering kneecaps clanking together like silver spoons--noting the skeletal staircases wending their way across the castle--the crumbled rose-wreaths around the trellises in disrepair.  
Despite the heat, frost was settling inside Cerise.  
"Come, child," Olwen motioned for Cerise as she entered the hall, nose assailed by the scent of myrrh and frankincense. "We have many matters to discuss."  
Cerise sunk gingerly onto the straw mat next to the sage, hand against Luffy's paw for solace.  
"There is much that you must know," began Olwen. "But for now, I will tell you this: there is something wrong with Nynvere. Something--"  
"Empty," finished Cerise, thinking of the warm upturn of Steve's lips--and the answering, echoing, wail of her cavernous heart at the memory. "Something barren. Broken."  
"Yes," agreed Olwen, a strange inflection in her mica-chipped eyes as she regarded Cerise. "Exactly. But it was not always so--once this land was blessed with the strongest of magics--tied to the lifeblood of its kings and queens."  
Olwen's eyes seemed misted with the fog of memory.  
"Magic needed the mightiest bloodlines to survive," she continued. "As long as there existed a worthy ruler, magic would seep into the sinews of Nynvere--and for centuries, it was so. There were many mages, belonging to many clans--but only two of those were ever strong enough to produce rulers."  
"Your mother," Olwen revealed as Cerise's eyes widened: "Belonged to the Sins of Sekhmet--the greatest fire users to ever walk upon this soil. And your father belonged to the Boreads--the supreme lords of the winter ice."  
"But it all ended thirty years ago," Kieran added, something dark and guttering in his topaz gaze. "Quotho and Jhago of the Alfakin--of the tribe that invaded us--they wanted our wealth and the power of our magic."  
"So they pillaged and raped and ruined," Kieran narrowed his eyes when Cerise looked unsurprised by this news. "Stripped us of our dignity and robbed us of our craft--and left no man, woman, or child of the reigning clans alive or unharmed."  
"Except you," a small smile stole over Olwen's wizened features. "Because your mother managed to send you to Earth before she--"  
"Before she died," Cerise pressed her lips together tightly. "Before they killed her and my father."  
"They killed many more than just your parents," came a new voice, brittle and brassy. "You are not alone in that regard."  
Cerise raised her eyes to see the same long brown braid she had in Quotho's hovercraft--and the woman who wore it.  
"Greetings, Lady," said the woman, hazel eyes alight in assessment even as she bowed, body tight-coiled: akin to a serpent seconds before strike. "I am Mahala of the Agnihotri."  
Cerise shook her hand numbly--didn't know what to do with the onslaught of names and knowledge.  
"The Council of Elders comes tomorrow," Mahala announced--and Cerise backed away at once--didn't want to know who would pass judgment upon her next--didn't want to feel more alien to the land than she already did.  
Just didn't.  
The three of them watched her leave with unfathomable eyes.  
"When will we tell her the prophecy?" Kieran demanded of Olwen.  
The crone stared up at the roughened ceiling--at the faded glyphs curved around the corners.  
"In time," she said. "If we tell her now she will renounce her title as Queen."  
"She is not Queen yet," Mahala noted swiftly. "And she is not ready."  
"She will _become_ ready," Kieran forced out through gritted teeth, striding out in the direction Cerise had left. "I believe it, and so should you, sister."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mythological references:
> 
> Sekhmet--the lion goddess of the sun, fire and ferocity in the Egyptian pantheon.  
> Boreas-- Greek god of winter and storms. (Modified to Boreads to indicate multiple mages in this story)
> 
> Agnihotri: from the Hindi word "Agni"--meaning fire.  
> "Agnihotri" refers to the ritual tending of the sacrificial fires by the Indian priests and soothsayers of old. 
> 
> Next update should be on, or before the 23rd. :)


	3. Of Augurs & Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well...due to a strike by the teachers union in my city, my last paper has been postponed till the 26th, and I am ANGERY. 
> 
> And so is Cerise. :))))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics at the start of the chapter from my beloved Hozier's 'Sedated.'
> 
> So, a couple things:
> 
> i) I think I warned all of you already, but if you wanted wholesome fluff and tenderness, there isn't going to be much of it in this sequel. I'm not saying it won't be there at all--but You Be The Anchor was about Cerise's character development through the discovery and light of love.  
> Sunlight is about her development through the loss of love--and I think you know how much darkness that implies. So if any of that is triggering for you, I'm already stating this beforehand. 
> 
> ii) I got a couple messages on my Tumblr asking about artwork permissions. My answer is: ABSOLUTELY! I would ADORE it if someone were to draw Cerise, or Steve, or Luffy--or anything from my story really, so long as you give me credit. I would be honored. :)

Something isn't right, babe  
I keep catching little words but the meaning's thin  
I'm somewhere outside my life, babe  
I keep scratching but somehow I can't get in... 

#  Of Augurs & Ascension 

Cerise felt somehow suspended outside the realm of reality, floating in the formless space inside of their eyes--inside of the entire twelve-person phalanx of them.  
They didn't seem like people to Cerise at all--smelling as they did of dried husk and gravelroot, clad in cloaks of unflinching white.  
But they were white-worn in a way Cerise had never known--they were the blemished white of burnt bone, the cracked color of crushed paper--cloaks fanning out behind them like the sails of some skeleton ship.  
"The Council will see you now, Corisande of the East," said the figure at the front, voice settling like the sigh of simmering steam.  
Cerise balked, dread clasping her throat with its hand.  
She retreated, only to find Kieran's unyielding hand at her back--firm perhaps, but there was no cruelty to it--at least none that Cerise could sense.  
The weight of Mahala's eyes was accusation and judgment all at once, but it was Olwen who spoke to her.  
"They will not harm you," she promised. "They are much like the augurs of Rome--only those men read the entrails of animals to seek fate. This council will only read your mind--but it is just as important."  
Cerise swallowed, staring at the shrouded entities--how could she grant them entrance to the sanctuary of her mind--where no one had gone before, no one had felt before, except--  
Except--  
"They cannot see what is not already known to you," Kieran said quietly, saving Cerise from finishing the thought. "You need not be ashamed of who you are."  
Cerise took in one long breath--and stepped forward.  
The tallest member held up her face, the bark-like touch of his hands heavy and cold as slate slabs against her skin.  
Her eyes involuntarily closed.  
And then she was screaming, savage claws seeming to slice deep against the surfaces of her mind--scrabbling against the sensitive flesh of her brain, searching for all her secrets, all her hidden, all her sacred--all her Steve--Steve with the touch of his hands at her waist, Steve with his smile like spun silver, Steve with the silk of his lips against her fingers,  
Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve--

It was over as soon as it had started.  
The hooded man drew away, leaving Cerise to fetch up against the frigid marble floor, rubbed raw and rasping at the intrusion.  
Kieran stooped to lift her to her feet at once, but she pushed him away, ire kindling in her veins--the slap of her hands against his chest like skin against stone.  
The Council took no notice of her anymore, speaking as one to Olwen.  
_"The girl is Gregori,_ " they hissed. _"Her ascension will not be easy."_  
There was an almost-unease in Olwen's eyes as she turned to Cerise--apprehension in Mahala's.  
_We must speak, Sage,_ insisted the Council, their voices as soundless as print on paper.  
They left as quickly as they had come, gliding across the floor in some sort of preternaturally silent spell--taking Olwen and the other two with them.  
For a long stretch of time--how long, she did not know--Cerise remained motionless, frozen in the wake of her desecration.  
But she was thawing--licks of flame turning her skin to tallow--the anger rising and rising.  
Luffy made no move to stop Cerise as she took off running down the hallway, slamming her way past the doors to the antechamber.  
Like the ripple of a river, the Council turned as one to look at her--  
But Cerise only had eyes for Olwen--  
And Kieran.  
"I am not an infant," she said, the fury as tight-knotted around her throat as any rope. "If you are to speak of me, then you will do so in my presence. I am not a problem to be dealt with--I am a person, and you _will_ treat me as such."  
Cerise's eyes were poison-green as she locked gazes with all of them.  
"You want my respect?" She snarled. "Earn it."  
It was only when she saw the plumes reflecting off the bronze of Kieran's eyes that she realized smoke was rising off of her.  
"As my Lady commands," his smile was edged with dry-iced approval. "So shall it be."  
Disarmed, Cerise was spared from responding as the council members finally pulled back their hoods.  
She blanched in horror as the sunlight struck their faces--if they could be considered faces at all.  
Whorls of wax seemed to run across their skin, great welts dripping like melted candle all the way down to their charred collarbones.  
_We see you now on your coronation day, Queenling,_ they told her, voices like wisps of wind against guttering flame. _Should you prove yourself worthy of the same._  
They brushed past her, light as a baby's breath, their cloaks spiraling out behind them like spiderwebs over a soil-steeped body.  
"So you do have some fight in you," Mahala noted dispassionately, speaking into the silence in the wake of their departure. "I'll admit, I could not sense it."  
Cerise's fingers warmed again, hot even against the bright of the sun streaming in.  
"If you measure a person's fight by the force of their fists alone, then you have no sense at all," she replied, words toneless as tepid water--but she looked Mahala straight in the face.  
The tips of Kieran's lips tugged upwards--a slight thaw to the glacial cast of his features, even as Olwen let out a surprised laugh.  
_"My kitten has always had claws,"_ Luffy seemed amused as she padded into the room. _"You've just been looking in the wrong place._ "  
Cerise's smile was short-lived as she remembered the words of the Council.  
"What did they mean, that I'm Gregori?" She demanded of Olwen.  
The sage too, sobered as she regarded Cerise out of silver-fish eyes.  
"The Gregori," she answered slowly, words coming wooden off her lips. "Were the watcher angels of old, when this land still belonged to the gods. To say that they were mages would be incorrect, perhaps--the Gregori did not use magic, they _were_ magic."  
"And you are their last remnant," Kieran finished, a chill seeping into Cerise's veins at his words.  
"No," she shook her head violently. "I'm not--I can't be. I'm just a normal human bei--"  
"When will you understand, girl?" Mahala spat, irises flashing like fire. "You are _not_ human. You have never been human--you are a descendant of the gods. Before they faded away from the fabric of this world, they said they would choose a champion--one that would serve Nynvere when it needed it most--and they chose you."  
"They chose you," Mahala bit the words out harshly. "But it looks to me as if you refuse to rule this land--your own land!"  
"A land that was lost to me the day I was born," Cerise had paled--but her words did not waver.  
Kieran pulled Mahala back as she seemed ready to bear down on Cerise--restrained her as he fixed Cerise with his sometime-amber eyes.  
"A land that has been looking for you ever since," he said quietly.  
And Cerise's words died on her tongue. 

~~~

Cerise sighed as there came two hard knocks upon her door.  
Luffy watched her silently as she refused to rise to her feet.  
The knock came again--sharper this time.  
Luffy stared at her.  
There was a beat of silence--  
Scowling, Cerise strode to the door and wrenched it open, only to see Kieran's uncompromising face.  
"Lady Corisande--" he began, but Cerise ignored him, the name chafing at her already gravel-raw nerves.  
Kieran stepped toward her.  
"Corisande--"  
And Cerise couldn't take it anymore.  
" _THAT IS NOT MY NAME!_ " She screamed--pushing against Kieran's chest, though it did nothing to shift him from his stance. "MY NAME IS CERISE!"  
"Stop," she whispered, voice infinitesimally small all of a sudden as she sunk down onto the ground, knees scraping like sandpaper. "Stop calling me that. It isn't who I am. It isn't."  
Kieran knelt down next to Cerise. He made no move to touch her--nothing to indicate that he wanted contact: his face was as remote as it always had been--but there was no viciousness to him either--he was as still and clear as water.  
"Why does it bother you so?" He asked. "Your parents did not name you Cerise. You had no family in your childhood, this we know to be true. So why does it matter?"  
"It matters," Cerise said thickly, tired as the moon minutes away from meeting the sun. "Because names are symbols of who we believe ourselves to be--who we want ourselves to be."  
"That I was Cerise--" she faltered, and then pressed on anyway. "That I _am_ Cerise--means to me, that I can give someone happiness even if I have to burn myself to produce that light."  
At Kieran's uncomprehending face, Cerise continued--though the memory seemed to slip through her hands like fine silk.  
"Orphans are not treated kindly in my world--at least not very often. They didn't give us names where we stayed--they weren't important, because we weren't people to them, and therefore we didn't have an identity. It was only if someone wanted to take us that names came into question, but--"  
Cerise loosened a slow breath.  
"But I was different," she said finally, after a long pause. "Because someone _did_ give me a name. A--a houseworker--I believe here you would think of them as maids. You see, they treated them even worse than us, because they were poor and had no choice--they barely fed them either--and they weren't allowed to talk to us--nor we to them. But there was one--I still remember her--she was always staring whenever they gave us fruits to eat--cherries in particular. She would stare, and stare and stare--"  
Luffy silently bracketed Cerise with her body as she stopped.  
"She seemed so sad," Cerise said simply. "So one day, I saved the last of my cherries for her. I don't remember what the color of her eyes were, or her hair--but I still remember the way she smiled when I gave those cherries to her."  
There was a small twist to Cerise's lips as she lifted her eyes to Kieran's.  
"You see, that's what my name means in her language--cherry," Cerise softly explained. "And that's what she named me--after they beat me for giving them to her. And that's who I became."  
"And now," Cerise rose to her feet. "Now you call me Corisande--tell me I am not who I say I am. But what does that mean to me--what does Corisande mean to me?"  
"A life that I could have had? A person I could have been?"  
Kieran's composure seemed to have been cut clean in half--a cracked sort of uncertainty in his topaz-toned eyes as he searched Cerise with his gaze.  
"A person you can still be," he managed despite of himself--though there was nothing steady about his voice anymore.  
The green of Cerise's eyes dimmed to dull moss as she looked at Kieran. 

"And what of the person I am now?"

~~~

The memory washed toward Cerise upon the waves of her light-winged sleep.  
_"You're leaving," Cerise's eyes burned with tears. "You're the only one who cares and you're leaving me!"  
"Hush, baby," she cupped Cerise's small, puffy cheeks in her peony-soft hands. "You will be fine--I know you will."  
"Listen to me, love," the woman insisted, gripping Cerise's tiny, trembling hands in her own. "Listen, mon trésor."  
"You showed me kindness in a place that only gave me pain," she hugged Cerise's shaking body close to her own. "A place that never gave you any love. Will never you give any love."  
Tears glimmered in the woman's eyes as Cerise snuffled against her shoulder.  
"You are the kind of light that burns through every shadow. The kind of flower that can grow in soil soaked with blood."  
"You have the power of a thousand suns, my child," she stepped away from Cerise, who was sobbing in earnest now, stretching out her fingers towards the woman's departing figure. "Promise me you won't lose it." _

Cerise woke with a gasp, chest heaving.  
Shards of glass seemed to pierce her breaths as the woman's words rang in her head--clanging like a clarion call to what she had lost.  
The remembered blue of Steve's eyes nearly blinded Cerise.  
"I'm sorry, Mammy," she choked bitterly. "I've lost my sun. I have no light anymore."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY! IT HURT ME TO WRITE THIS TOO. IT DID! 
> 
> Mythological references:
> 
> Augur: ancient Roman religious official who read the entrails of animals and the signs of birds to divine the fate of man.
> 
> Gregori: Angels who descended onto Earth, against the Lord of Light, according to the Book of Enoch.


	4. Roots Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are set into motion....
> 
> All aboard the angst train! (Not that we were ever off it, really, but...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Sorry for the long delay...my finals are over at last, and I have about ten days off... so gonna do my best to write as much as I can!
> 
> Quote at the start of the chapter is from Leonard Cohen's 'Beautiful Losers.'
> 
> My next update should be on the 4th.

How can I begin anything new, with all of yesterday in me? 

#  Roots Rising 

Luffy fixed her yellow-diamond eyes on Cerise's bird-hollow frame, huddled upon the bed.  
_Child,_ she said gravely. _How long will you continue like this? There are things to be done._  
_And they will be done,_ thought Cerise, but didn't have the heart--or perhaps the energy, to say. _Just not by me._  
But time seemed to drag by as cruelly inexorable as Kronos's scythe--cleaving Cerise's mind clean in half.  
To shape her misery into words would make it real--would make it tangible.  
Would mean that there really was no going back.  
And still--still Cerise felt as though something could stop her from hurtling into the inky recesses of her slow-chapped pain--  
As though if she just looked up from the murk around her, Steve's arms would still be waiting--  
Cerise dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, as if that could force the image away from her--away and into the derelict, cobwebbed crevices at the very edges of her brain.  
"Tell me how you found me," Cerise suddenly met Luffy's glowing gaze--desperate for something--for anything to cling to instead of the emptiness of Steve's absence. "Because I know now it was no accident that you showed up that night outside my apartment."  
Luffy kneaded her paws against the rough-spun rug--she knew what Cerise was doing--and Cerise knew she knew.  
But the panther humored her.  
For the time being.  
_We have our own magic,_ the rich soundlessness of Luffy's voice still managed to strike Cerise. _The Guardians of Nynvere--we do not bend fire, or water, or ice to our will. To us belongs the primal magic of the wild--the force of the earth._  
Luffy's tail flicked across the sharp-stoned floor.  
_When Quotho and Jhago laid waste to this land--did what they did to your parents--_ Luffy paused as Cerise's hands formed white-knuckled fists--and continued on, slightly gentler than before. _You were sent to earth. And I followed you--made myself a form that would allow me to go unnoticed. And searched for you ever since._  
"But how did you find me?" Cerise repeated--curious in spite of herself.  
_Your scent,_ Luffy replied, settling back on her massive haunches. _Nobody has one quite like it._  
At Cerise's uncomprehending face, Luffy resumed, the heavy timbre of her thoughts clanging like a gong in Cerise's throbbing head.  
_Yes, your scent. You smell of battle,_ as the day sunk into night, Luffy's eyes deepened into ochre solemnity. _Of bloodshed and new beginnings._  
The words stung Cerise--fresh salt rubbed into her open, weeping wounds.  
_How am I to be the beginning of anything,_ Cerise asked herself bitterly, the taste of defeat acrid and acid-burning upon her tongue. _When I feel like I'm at an end?_  
She crumpled against the coarse sheets--or meant to, but Luffy's sharp growl roused her at once.  
_Enough,_ the panther rumbled. _Lying here wishing the Lethe would consume you will not fix anything, little one._  
"There's nothing left to fix," Cerise said numbly. _Nothing left in my body except desecration and abandoned altars._  
Luffy snarled--didn't need to articulate what Cerise already knew she would say.  
"What do you want from me, Luff?" Cerise closed her eyes tiredly, the wisp of her voice seeming as insubstantial as the weight of her heart. "What do you want? For me to go out there and be some sort of queen? Some warrior with a heart of iron?"  
She rolled over onto her side--turning her back on Luffy--on the responsibility that lay outside her door.  
All of it.  
"Sorry," Cerise said tightly into the thickening air. "But I am no queen. My heart is wood and I am fire."  
"I don't want to burn anymore, Luff," she shut her eyes again--against Luffy, against her own vulnerability--the soft padding of paws reaching her ears as if from a great distance.  
Luffy loomed over her--forcing Cerise to meet her gaze.  
_I want you to get off this bed,_ Luffy pushed her massive head against Cerise's shoulder. _I want you to walk out of this room and train with Kieran. With Mahala--with whosoever offers._  
Cerise's eyes flickered an unsure green.  
"Will that help?"  
_It'll teach your body to move when your heart wants to stop,_ Luffy answered--a tinge of resignation to her words. _You want to give up--but if you teach your body to keep going, one day your heart will lose. It'll stop burning--you'll live. And the feelings will fade to ash._  
Cerise swallowed--stared at her own pale, diminished reflection in Luffy's lamp-bright eyes--  
And got to her feet. 

~~~

"They told me I was Gregori," Cerise surmised shortly, eyes intent on Olwen. "And _you_ told me they didn't use magic, they _were_ magic. But what does that mean for me?"  
"It means," Olwen said quietly. "That your gift is not the same as anyone else's. Most people--their magic takes a certain form--an inclination or a shape--like earth, or air, or fire."  
"But you," the sage pressed the tip of her finger into Cerise's forehead. "The manna in you is raw--unchecked and uninhibited. You can use it for anything--be anything."  
"You can be whoever you choose," Kieran continued, molten-gold eyes rapier-sharp against Cerise. "You can be any, and all. You do not have to limit yourself to one magic--one identity, or--"  
"One name," Kieran finished, the corners of his lips pushing upwards.  
Cerise blinked--tried to offer him a smile of her own,.  
It was the first bit of kindness he had shown her--and that, perhaps just as much as anything Luffy had said--made her decision for her.  
"I will train," Cerise declared--trying for firmness as she met Mahala's ever-present scowl. "I do not say anything else--but I will train."  
"Then I must warn you, Corisande," Olwen rose to her feet. "Whatever they taught you on Earth--it has not prepared you for what is to come. Your gift is immense--but the effort to master it will be just as immense."  
"Your training will break you," Kieran said flatly. "And it will succeed only if you emerge strong in the broken places. You will hate us for it--you may even hate yourself for what you have to do."  
Cerise's lips thinned.  
"I will train," she repeated. "I am ready."  
Kieran rose to his feet.  
"Then follow me."

~~~

Cerise stared in confusion at the grove Kieran had led her to--the damp netting of the moss under her sandals deadening her footsteps.  
"I don't understand," she told Kieran, waiting by the gnarled roots of the tree shadowing the sun above them. "Do you want me to lift the tree or something...?"  
Her voice trailed off at Kieran's grim face.  
"No," he said. "I want you to hit it."  
Cerise's mouth popped open in shock.  
"Did you think you could harness your power right away?" Kieran raised a sardonic eyebrow. "You must begin where _it_ begins--the body is the birthplace of all magic. The manna moves in your veins--breathes in your lungs, nowhere else."  
"You wish to manipulate manna to your will?" Kieran raised his voice above the suffocating silence of the grove--the sickly-sweet scent of rotting leaves. "You wish to fill in the footsteps of Isis?"  
He pointed up towards the branches-stolid and immovable upon Cerise.  
"Make your body like this tree," Kieran instructed. "This is ironwood--the hardest and strongest of the Great Oaks in the land. You must be as well."  
"Here," he pulled his arm back--and struck the tree-bark with the full force of his fist.  
The branches shuddered, twisting like dark serpents into the fractured light of the sky.  
Kieran held out his hand to Cerise--unmarred and unbloodied.  
"How--"  
Kieran cut off Cerise's dumbfounded question--eyes uncompromising and frigid as he beckoned her forward.  
"Your hands will break before the wood does," he stated baldly. "Do it anyway."  
Cerise loosed an unsteady breath--Steve's face, soft-curved into the lines of open love, swam in front of her eyes. 

She set her teeth--and punched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to mythological characters/ elements:
> 
> Kronos--King of the Titans in the Greek myths, ruler of Time--particularly its destructive, all-consuming aspects. Often depicted with a sickle or scythe. 
> 
> Lethe--River of Forgetfulness in the Greek Underworld--shades of the dead would drink of its waters to lose all memory of their mortal lives. 
> 
> Manna--the magical energy possessed by spellcasters or mages needed to perform all acts of conjuring. Derived from the Polynesian, Maori and Melanesian belief of a supernatural life force and power. 
> 
> Isis--Egyptian goddess of magic and fate.


	5. Mor'du

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An (un)healthy helping of angst.  
> Because I know no peace and will subsequently give you none, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am very sorry, I know I'm horribly behind schedule...but I had a few medical issues that had to be sorted out, so...ya know, fun times. 
> 
> But here it is!
> 
> 'Mor'du' in French means "bitten"--will make sense (I hope) as you read the chapter. 
> 
> Lyrics at the start of the chapter are adapted from Florence and the Machine's 'Only If For A Night.'

The only solution is to stand and fight,  
My body is bruised and I am set alight,  
You come over me like some holy rite,  
And although I am burning--  
You are still the only light. 

#  Mor'du 

"Again," came Kieran's inflectionless voice, striking against Cerise's fevered ears like a wave of cold water.  
Her fists were screaming in protest--raw-aching and resistant against the unrelenting bark of the tree.  
But she punched anyway, the wet sound of her flesh hitting the hardwood almost as ugly as the weals forming on her hands.  
Even so, her strength was faltering--they had been at it the entire morning, the close-burning sun now heavy and hot upon her sweat-slicked shoulders--and Cerise's punches were slowing, the skin of her fists too bloodied to bear any more contact with the tree.  
Yet Kieran remained inexorable.  
"Again," he said remorselessly. "Find an anchor--something that gives you a sense of purpose. And push past the pain."  
"HOW?" Cerise howled, the agony hitting her hands with the force of a battering ram. "WHAT PURPOSE DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE?"  
"THAT I'M DESTINED FOR SOMETHING GREAT? THAT FATE WILL SEE ME THROUGH?"  
"No," Kieran replied, unruffled--the steady serenity of his countenance infuriating Cerise no end. "Fate will not see you through-- _you_ will see you through--if you have the will. Destiny is no outside force--it lives within you. It is as much a part of you as the cloth you wear on your body--it is the thread of what you think and what you do, that binds together the person you become."  
Cerise swallowed down the doubt scalding her throat--fate didn't feel that way to her--that it was capable of being controlled--that she could hold it in her hands.  
No, it seemed to shadow her every move--some slinking creature wrapping fetters around her body--snaking Ladon-like around her ankles.  
"It is," the sand-toned warrior's gaze bored brassy and battle-bright into Cerise's own: "What you feel and who you feel it towards."  
She froze.  
Cerise hadn't meant to say it aloud--or to say it at all--but there was something about Kieran: something complex and ever-shifting, something that spoke to her of her own striated, fractured self.  
And so the words were out before she could stop herself.  
"Am I a reflection of the people I love," she whispered, lips stiff and unmoving, "Or are the people I love reflections of me?"  
Kieran stared at her for a brief minute--something indecipherable flickering inside the gold coil of his eyes.  
"This is your story," he said impassively--but there was something still there, lingering at the edges of his face. "And your struggle. So it must be your answer to find."  
"Lesson's over for today," Kieran turned away from Cerise abruptly--missing her confused glance at his words.  
Cerise stepped away from the tree with palpable relief--heading away from the grove.  
Or she would have, if Kieran hadn't snatched her wrist.  
"Where do you think you're going?" He demanded, pointing at her shredded knuckles. "Those need to be taken care of."  
Cerise raised an eyebrow.  
"What happened to 'this training will break you?'" She couldn't resist making tiny air quotes as she asked Kieran, withdrawing from his fingers, coarse yet cool to the touch.  
Kieran narrowed his eyes--the first sign of irritation he'd ever shown around her.  
"It _will_ break you," he averred. "That does not mean you cannot tend to the broken pieces."  
He pulled her hands back into his grasp, digging out a wax-toned salve from his satchel.  
Kieran ignored Cerise's sharp hiss of pain as he daubed it over her hands--brisk but perhaps not brutal.  
To distract from the singeing sting, Cerise fell to observing the arc of Kieran's fingers as they passed over her skin: there was something very liquid in his movement--reminiscent of the undulating ripples of rivers Cerise had once seen as a child.  
"You're a water mage, aren't you?" She summed up the courage to ask--and Kieran dropped her hands in surprise.  
"Who told you?" He questioned, rising to his feet.  
"No one," Cerise shrugged, offering him a hesitant smile. "You just...seem that way."  
"And you also said you were Lord of the Lìr," she added at Kieran's unconvinced expression.  
He furrowed his brow.  
"You know the ancient myths?" He asked, skepticism twisting his russet-tinged lips.  
"Some, I suppose," Cerise answered slowly. "They were after all the original maps of meaning mankind once drew."  
She shifted uncomfortably in the assessing silence that followed--broke it eventually:  
"So where are they?" Cerise cautiously enquired. "Your...clan?"  
Something shuttered behind Kieran's eyes, darkening to umber as he met Cerise's curious gaze.  
"Gone," he replied tightly, turning on his heel. "Gone somewhere that knows no return."  
"I take your leave now, Lady," Kieran bent at the waist into a low bow, walking out of the grove. "The rest of the day is yours."  
Cerise looked after him a moment--inexplicably feeling as though he'd just closed a door in her face.  
Her eyes finally returned to the tree--its wood now nourished by the scarlet sap of her blood.  
Cerise sunk into a half-aware reverie, the tree blurring at the edges of her sightline as she continued to stare, the weight of Kieran's words bearing down upon her like entombed marble.  
He'd told her to find a purpose--an anchor.  
Unbidden, the memory of Steve's goodbye slipped past the threadbare defense of her mind--his words slicing viciously into her skin.  
_"You're not coming at all. You're staying here, in New York."_  
Cerise's arm, almost as if it had developed a life of its own, raised itself--and landed a savage blow against the bark in front of her--  
Thud:  
Came the sound of her skin splitting apart all over again--but Cerise didn't care. Didn't mind even--she welcomed the pained plead of her fists--far better to feel that than the plead of her heart. 

_"You can't come with me."_  
Thud. 

_"Because you're a liability."_  
Thud. 

_"Because you'll kill yourself overtaxing your power."_  
Thud. 

_You deserve the world at your feet...and I can't give that to you now._  
Thud. 

Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud--  
Cerise continued to rain down blows upon the ironwood tree--didn't know if the screaming torment in her mind was borne of her torn skin or of her stifled, suffocated voice--didn't care.  
Liquid pooled in the hollows of her cheeks--and Cerise snarled, swiping at her face with her shuddering, shrieking hands.  
She kept at it even though it made the hurt worse--dug the heels of her hands into her eyes until she couldn't tell where the tears ended and the blood began. 

Somewhere far into the distance--Luffy roared. 

~~~

Steve felt something deaden in him as he stepped into the museum, hidden from visitors under the shadow of his cap and hooded glasses.  
It was his face, everywhere--emblazoned with title of 'First Avenger--First Hero.'  
The words did nothing to reduce the crumbling ash dusted over the still-smoking crater of his heart: only Bucky's face, in the very corner of the hall--produced some barely-alive flicker.  
"Why do you look so spooked?" Sam came up behind him, relaxed and easy. "Thought this might even cheer you up, Cap."  
"It--" Steve pressed his lips together--glancing at Sam from the corner of his eye. They'd struck up an uneasy companionship of sorts--where Steve held his secrets like children to his chest and Sam knew he held them--but didn't ask anyway. "Thank you for trying, Sam."  
"I don't get it," the ex-pilot blinked at Steve. "These people see greatness in you. Why doesn't that make you feel better?"  
Steve backed away towards the exit--unable to stand the empty promise of the room a second longer--felt as though he were pinned by the pitiless maw of some great beast--the angered animal of his own actions, pressing down and down and down on him until he couldn't breathe.  
"Because they see greatness in me and mistake it to be goodness," Steve answered numbly. "But they are not the same thing. And my goodness isn't in me--isn't _with_ me anymore. It's not--she's not--"  
Steve choked himself off, the words cutting across his tongue like barbed wire--unaware of Sam gaping at him in shock.  
"My goodness is nowhere in that museum," he managed to force out, thinking of green-glass eyes and the lace-laden touch of a familiar, honey-hued hand. "My goodness is nowhere within me. And I will never forget it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to mythology/mythological entities:
> 
> Ladon-- Snake-like dragon creature in Greek mythology, guard of the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides. 
> 
> I wasn't going to mention this...but currently I'm going through a few personal issues, medical and otherwise--which means that my writing process has halted a bit.  
> Please don't worry--I am every bit as committed to finishing this story as I was before--I genuinely want to. It's one of the few points of reason in my life.  
> I will continue working on it as I always have--it's just that my updates may be a bit slower, and I'm sorry for that, but I hope you understand. 
> 
> My next update should be tentatively on the 11th, or slightly after.


	6. Firaaq

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well....here it is--angst ahoy!  
> Please forgive Steve...he is Big Sad :(

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best to get this out on time, be nice please!
> 
> 'Firaaq' is the Urdu word for parting or separation, also paradoxically used to mean 'conquest.'  
> I think when you read Cerise's section, the second meaning will become clear, hopefully...

I took my time saying goodbye to you.  
I'm still not done yet. 

#  Firaaq 

Steve had lost count of the punching bags he'd gone through--the boxing gloves lost hours earlier to the helpless frenzy he'd found himself locked in.  
So he landed blow after blow, the skin on his knuckles splitting as purplish-blue as the porphyry of his sorrow: unaware, unconscious even--that somewhere far away, somebody else's hands were burning with the same desolation--that selfsame hollow, hungry need.  
The bag finally gave way under Steve's fists--ugly and exposed as the sore of his heart.  
He stepped back only when Sam's voice drifted in through the door--sucking in lungfuls of air--but it felt like the oxygen itself was evaporating.  
Sam's eyes were heavy and uncharacteristically solemn on him as he stepped into the room.  
"It doesn't have to be this way, you know," he joined Steve on the wood-husked floor, crossing his legs. "What you're doing right now isn't fooling anybody. You're running from something--or someone--but you don't have to. You can choose to stop. You can change the narrative, Cap. You can."  
Steve's mouth turned dry at Sam's words--a slight echo of the ones he himself had once told Ce--  
Her.  
He blew on his knuckles half-heartedly--the physical pain helping to center him away from the insistent, angry throb of his chest.  
Or at least, he wanted to think it did.  
Perhaps they were still one and the same--mind and matter a never-ending Ouroboros of what he had done.  
Of what he had given away.  
"How can I change the narrative," asked Steve bitterly, thinking of the smell of her skin--how it was a luxury his hands could no longer hold on to. "When the story itself has ended?"  
Sam blinked at him, slow and weary.  
"You know," he began. "I've seen men return from the force--they come back broken. They come back collecting the splinters of their selves--try to create a whole again. And at first, that's what I thought happened to you--with S.H.I.E.L.D. But it isn't."  
Steve averted his eyes from Sam's penetrating gaze--but he already knew too much.  
There was no taking it back.  
"It isn't," Sam repeated. "Yesterday because of the wind, a scarf flew across the road...it was green I think? You held on to it for an hour. Like it reminded you of something--of someone. It's more than that--last week you saw a girl with black hair--she had her back to you. And you stretched out your hand like you wanted to touch it--to touch her. I thought you were crazy, but--"  
Sam shrugged helplessly.  
"It's like you're tracing the footsteps of someone who's already walked out of your life," he finally finished.  
"She didn't walk out," Steve said thickly, bile corroding the insides of his throat. "I let her go."  
Sam stared at him for a long moment.  
"I don't know how to help you," he said at last. "I asked you to stay here because I thought you could use the company--but it doesn't seem to be working. What do you want, Steve? Do you want to be alone? Do you want to be with friends?"  
_I want her,_ came the mute plea of his mind--but there was no point in saying it anymore.  
"I don't want to be alone," Steve answered tiredly: maddened by the itch inside his being with her absence--imagined her lulling it to sleep. "I don't want to be around people either. I want to--I want to be _able_ to want things aside from her...in spite of her."  
"But I can't," Steve said numbly. "I just can't. Thank you for trying, Sam--but you won't understand."  
"You're right," Sam huffed. "I won't. But I can sit with you in this hole till you dig yourself out of it. And you will, Steve--you can. Your heart will heal."  
Steve smiled humorlessly--a rictus grin, an almost-tearing of the lips.  
"There's no healing a heart that broke someone else's," he replied tonelessly.  
And turned to the punching bag again. 

~~~

Cerise stared out at the still waters before her feet--at the motionless crone beside her, palming a small stone between her hands.  
"What do you want me to do?" She asked Olwen blankly, the earth cloying and crumbled under her bare feet, white shift dress already soaked with sweat. "You want me to lift the stone?"  
"No," the sage lifted her face peaceably into the daylight. "I want you to lift the lake."  
Cerise's mouth fell open at her serene eyes, upturned and glittering slightly in the golden, sunspun air.  
"I--I can't," she stammered in shock. "I don't know what you expect from me, to achieve inner peace or some bullshit like that, but I--"  
"There will never be peace for you," Olwen sobered, eyes intent on Cerise. "No, you burn too much--you feel too much for that. And I want you to use that to your advantage."  
She pointed towards the lake.  
"Whatever's screaming inside you, clawing for release--I want you to let it out."  
Olwen rose to her feet, beckoning Cerise forward.  
"Let the raw animal of your heart loose--let the truth out. The real truth. The real you."  
"All of it."  
Cerise felt her nails cut grooves into the seeking flesh of her palms--felt _it_ , that sometime-slumbering presence that had haunted her all her life--  
Felt it press against the confines of her skin: teething to the touch, like it was finally ready to shred itself--to shred herself--apart.  
And so she let it out.  
Let the gaping maw of her loss rip itself open: let the rage yawn wider and wider until it swallowed her whole--until she was subsumed in it--  
Until she became secondary to the sadness.  
Steve's words, soundless as skin on skin but sharp as a knife's edge, drifted down to her overturning brain--from many months ago, many worlds ago--  
Many lifetimes ago, almost.  
_"You have to stop associating your power with negative emotions. You never let your darkness guide you--eventually it'll corrode you from the inside out."_  
"Sorry, Steve," Cerise murmured, extending her hand. "But the darkness has your name now...and I can't let it go, anymore than I can let you go."  
She curled her fingers-  
And the water began to rise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to mythology and mythical figures:
> 
> Ouroboros--an ancient serpentine or dragonlike symbol depicting the creature eating its own tail--indicating the intertwining of life, death, and rebirth. 
> 
> Also, because I'm STILL getting stupid ass messages on Tumblr complaining about the lack of uniformity in chapter length, I'm repeating this one last time: I plan my chapters around PLOT POINTS, not word counts. So if I finish the plot points in 1000 words, that's how long the chapter is. If I finish it in 2000 words, then that's where the chapter ends.
> 
> My next update should be on or after the 17th.


	7. The Wasting Sickness Of Anthony Stark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst, angst, and more angst. 
> 
> Lyrics at the start of the chapter are from Hozier's 'In The Woods Somewhere.'
> 
> The title itself is a nod to the Celtic myths--a lot of them are about 'wasting sicknesses' and are named as such, too.  
> Eg- The Wasting Sickness of Chu Chulaind and the Jealousy of Emer,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am soooo sorry this is as late as it is....I am caught up with college, buried under work and I honestly can't promise that I'll update as rapidly as I used to--but I WILL update.  
> I'm working on this fic, I just have been slowed down by responsibilities, and I do hope you understand. :)  
> Please just bear with me--I have a lot on my plate.

When I awoke  
The moon still hung.  
The night so black that the darkness hummed...

An awful noise  
Filled the air.  
I heard a scream in the woods somewhere.

A woman's voice--  
I quickly ran  
Into the trees with empty hands  
To save a life I didn't have.

How many years  
I know I'll bear  
I found something in the woods somewhere.... 

#  The Wasting Sickness Of Anthony Stark 

Night wrapped her darkened mantle over the Avengers Tower:  
Tony could feel her shroud settle over him silently--the scraping burn in his throat the only reminder that he was, in fact, drawing breath.  
The whiskey slipped rough and regretful past the acrid seams of Tony's mouth as he stared at the dim holo-screen--as he had been for the past few hours.  
Or days.

Perhaps even weeks--  
He'd lost count. 

Tony heard Pepper's light instep before she'd so much as opened her mouth: and he wanted to do something.  
Anything--  
Touch her hand, perhaps--squeeze her fingers to let her know he was still here--still present, unlike the wraiths of his memory drifting formlessly across the room.  
He wanted to _want_ to do something--  
But there was nothing--nothing except a bone-deep weightlessness within him, some strange free-float within his being:  
No anchor to tie him--no one to tether him home.  
"Tony," Pepper said softly--as if afraid even her voice would shatter whatever was left of Tony's composure. "You have to stop. Stop looking--you haven't slept in weeks."  
"Stop?" Tony repeated mechanically--like the words hit his ears but couldn't collide against the barrier of his stone-battered mind. "I have to. I need to find her, Pep. I need to--"  
The alcohol choked its way down the column of Tony's throat--the scald synonymous with his sorrow.  
"I need to bring her body home," Tony finished numbly--and the bottle splintered between his fingers.  
He barely noticed the cuts--or maybe he did, it was only that the pain had ceased to matter: it only served to remind him that he was alive.  
And she was not.  
She was not.  
"Oh, Tony," Pepper breathed, a terrible, tearing agony in her eyes--a helplessness at her inability to sew herself into the fabric of his grief. "I'm so sorry."  
"You know, it's funny," Tony said blankly, as if he hadn't heard her at all--as if the words had somehow disappeared into the ether around him. "We were never really happy--not for very long. First it was Nick, and then it was Quotho and Jhago, and then it was Peggy--"  
Tony took in a tight, wavering breath.  
"The three of us were drowning," he continued bleakly. "And I don't think we ever knew how to save each other, not really--but even then, at least there was this understanding--that we were drowning together."  
"At least there was that," Tony mumbled incoherently, raising his eyes again to the holo-screen: but it remained as lightless as it had been at the start. "But she's gone, and he's missing--and I'm the one left behind."  
"I'm always the one left behind," he repeated, feeling as though the cords of his life lay cut all around him--severed pieces instead of the tapestry he had longed all his life to weave.  
"Always," he whispered--and buried his head in his hands and wept.  
Tony barely registered the orange blossom scent of Pepper's embrace--hardly felt the warmth of her skin.  
No, there was something entirely too arctic moving through him--Boreas-barren and bitter.  
"You haven't been left behind, Tony," Pepper reminded him gently, hands steadfast and strong against his shoulders. "People are still here for you. They love you--I love you."  
"No they don't," Tony said abruptly--sudden venom in his voice. "They love the idea of me. Of Iron Man: someone strong and brave and selfless--but that's not who I am."  
"It's not," Tony moved away from Pepper. "I'm not a symbol or a story or a saving grace--I'm selfish, and unkind, and impatient--and she saw all that and loved me anyway. They both did."  
"They saw me," Tony said thickly. "But now there isn't anything to look for anymore."  
When Pepper left, he did not know--the blackness of the screen had swallowed his eyes whole--the ink of its futility eddying around Tony's wet-blooded fingers.  
_Where are you?_  
The room swirled out of focus--the small green dot, the pulse of Cerise's life:  
Present only in its absence.  
Tony dug the heels of his hands into his eyes--stared past the burn into the screen: let the darkness bore into him, let its soot-stained fingers wrap themselves around his brain.  
_Where are you?_  
_Where are you where are you where are you_

_Come back._

~~~

Kieran stood motionless upon the crag, the roar of the sea echoing in the conch-shell call of his heart.  
But the water didn't flow through him anymore.  
And he didn't know how to bring it back.  
She appeared as soundlessly as she always had.  
"Why have you come to see me, child of the Undine?" She asked tonelessly, voice hissing like the feathered seafoam lacing itself below Kieran's feet.  
"You know why I have come, Branwen," Kieran replied without turning.  
"Then you will receive the same answer," the indigo gash of her lips barely seemed to widen. "You seek your fate in the lining of my hands--but your actions are the sieve through which it will fall. Whatever the essence left at the bottom--that is your destiny."  
Kieran opened his mouth--but she held out her iridescent hand before he could speak.  
"I say this to you now, son of the sea," Branwen's hair blew in the bat-winged wind. "There is poison in your water--and only the Phantom Queen can draw it out."  
"Who?" Kieran demanded, catching at her wrist only to find his hand passing through her wisping form. "Who is she?"  
"I cannot tell you that," Branwen smiled, beginning to fade around the edges. "She does not exist yet."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to myth/mythological creatures:
> 
> Boreas--Greek god of the north wind and the harbinger of winter. 
> 
> The Undine-- water nymphs of the European traditions.
> 
> My next update should be on or around 5th Feb.


	8. The Bones Of Bellona

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well...some trippy vibes for you!  
> I had a lot of fun with this... (though it won't be fun for you. :))))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote at the start of the chapter is adapted from a snippet of Rupi Kaur's as yet unnamed book.
> 
> SURPRISE Y'ALL! I came out with this early. :)

life and death are old friends  
and I am the meeting between them  
what is there to be afraid of  
if I am the gift they give each other  
This place never belonged to me anyway. 

#  The Bones Of Bellona 

Cerise didn't know what had led her there.  
The barely-risen sun had dredged up something within her too: some cessation of life yet fossilization of death--an apathetic antithesis between the past and the present--  
Some strange suspension above her own suffering:  
As though she were an unwilling voyeur to the vulgarity of her own heartbreak--all the unwelcome, unflinching truth of it.  
The restlessness had pecked at her body like a vulture at carrion--sent her careening out past the castle, past the woods--  
Out into the witch-wailing of the waves, the susurration of the sea soft yet insistent against the lining of her ears.  
There was something very subliminal about its song--opening as it did a fount of something ancient and ancestral in Cerise's veinblood--something bitter-hungry and brittle, pressing against the barrier of her skin.  
So she stumbled her way past the rocks, unmindful of how they cut into her--of the scarlet-stained trail her savaged skin left behind.  
The white of her dress rose up behind her in the dust-powdered wind, carrying her like sails through her trance--  
Sending her out like a ship to water.  
And there it lay before her, opalescent and robin's egg blue: the spangled sea spray nibbling at her ankles like the lips of a lover.  
Cerise blinked her eyes into being--into seeing--  
For there was something flickering against the foam--bits of bone: bleached and pale as milk-glass in the dappled light of the dawn.  
There was something deadening in Cerise's head, the sound of the rolling sand walling off and away from her ears.  
Like a marionette divested of its strings, she fell forward into the stark wilderness of the water--the waves cresting over her head--  
And her hands touched bone.  
Cerise's eyes flared white. 

_The smell of blood was strong under the vermilion-streaked sky--the sweetish rot of its fetor burning in Cerise's nose._  
_There was nothing of the earth that she could see: not when the bodies carpeted the ground in every direction--sprawled in indecent helplessness, piled and pushed one over the other with the vulnerable indignity only corpses could possess._  
_Corpses of all kinds--human on human, animal on animal--and something entirely other: bodies with strange snouts on human faces--claws on human feet._  
_Cerise was choking, gorge rising at the mulch-like miasma engulfing her--trying to back away from the decay before her--but there was nowhere to turn._  
_No inch of the soil underneath her feet remained unbloodied--everywhere there was bone upon bone and flesh upon strewn flesh--the putrefaction so cloying Cerise could almost taste it._  
_She recoiled in horror at a distant curl of crimson--so much like Natasha--and then she saw the shield._  
_His shield._  
_Cracked down the middle and abandoned:_  
_Blood speckling the once-pristine white star._  
_Cerise's chest was withering in flames--she opened her mouth, to shout his name--to beg--to do anything, but--_

"NO!"  
Cerise screamed past the acidic burn of the water flooding out of her mouth--dimly realizing someone was pulling her out of the sea--  
Calloused yet liquid-smooth hands tugging her to shore.  
Cerise keeled to the side on the coarse-crystalled sand, retching up water, lungs feeling as though they'd been scraped inside out with sandpaper.  
"What in the name of the Raijin were you doing?" Kieran spat as he pulled her up, livid.  
"I--" Cerise's throat seemed to be lined with glass, every word forcing a shard further downward. "I didn't--"  
Kieran followed her frantic gaze to the sea--translucent and deceptively guileless under the now-blazing sun.  
"I don't know what happened," Cerise whispered finally. "Something was calling to me--the _sea_ was calling to me, and I came here, and I saw--"  
Kieran's fingers reflexively twitched a fraction, almost as if he were about to reach for Cerise.  
"You saw the bones," he asked flatly--there was no real question in the frost of his tone. "Didn't you?"  
"How did you--" she gaped at him, some subconscious part of her bridling at his easily-won insight. "How did you know that?"  
"I see your face," Kieran replied tightly, tension splintering between the quiet cracks of his voice. "And I know that look."  
"What you saw were the bones of Bellona," he continued grimly. "Many a hundred moons ago they were scattered to the four winds--and then they sunk into the sea."  
"And now," Kieran's eyes were guttering, twin lamps of mottled, murky honey. "They appear only to those who wage war."  
"I don't understand," Cerise said numbly, the tips of her fingers turning heavy as lead despite the heat. "I'm not fighting any war, I--"  
"Aren't you?" Kieran cut her off, eyes boring into her face. "The worst wars are the ones you wage in your own head--against your own self."  
Cerise stilled despite her sodden skin, some sort of synergy slipping into the distance between them.  
"You've seen them too, haven't you?" Cerise murmured--recognizing the fractured light in his eyes--the shadow ever-present in the sun.  
Kieran dipped his head in almost-imperceptible assent.  
"So what's your war?" She asked in spite of herself--in spite of the half-quailing, half-riling bite of her soul at Kieran and his damning perceptivity.  
"The same as yours," he responded, toneless as tepid water. "Fate and free will are old friends, perhaps--and I am the conversation between them."  
And then he stepped away--let the wind whip through whatever had just passed between them.  
"In the future," Kieran withdrew, beginning to pad past the sand. "If the bones call to you again--and they will--do not answer. The sea may love you today--but she will offer you no mercy, only her judgment: and it will drown you."  
He turned to look at Cerise one last time.  
"When it happens--run away. Run as fast as you can."  
"The bones only warn you once."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References to mythical elements/ characters:
> 
> 1\. Raijin--also known as 'kaminari-sama', is the god of thunder, lightning and storms in Japanese mythology and in the Shinto tradition. 
> 
> 2\. Bellona- is the Roman goddess of war, death and violence, whose Greek counterpart is Enyo. 
> 
> My next update should be on or after 13th Feb.

**Author's Note:**

> References: to the Sibyl, the Greek prophetess  
> Lir from Ler and Manannan mac Lir, Irish gods of the sea. 


End file.
